Outgoing Michigan GOP Chairperson Betsy DeVos with former President George Bush in Sterling Heights on Tuesday, February 8, 2000. DeVos threw her support behind Gov. George W. Bush. Photo by Jeff Kowalsky/Special to the Detroit Free Press

As Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos addresses supporters at the Lansing Sheraton election night Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006 and concedes to Gov. Granholm his family sadly watches as he speaks. They include from left: Andrea, Elissa, Rick and his wife Betsy. His youngest son Ryan was late to the stage. REGINA H. BOONE/Detroit Free Press

Betsy DeVos is shown during a news conference, Thursday, June 15, 2006, in Lansing, Mich. Republican women from the state House and Senate as well as business held a Women for DeVos Coalition news conference to announce their support for her husband, GOP gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos. (AP Photo/Al Goldis)

Dick DeVos, center, son of Orlando Magic Chairman Rich DeVos, and his wife Betsy DeVos, right, watch from their court side seats during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Minnesota Timberwolves in Orlando, Fla., Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

Vice president-elect Mike Pence, president-elect Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos leave the clubhouse after their meeting at Trump International Golf Club, November 19, 2016 in Bedminster Township, New Jersey. Trump and his transition team are in the process of filling cabinet and other high level positions for the new administration. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Free Press special report (June 2014)

A yearlong investigation published by the Detroit Free Press in June 2014 showed Michigan taxpayers pour nearly $1 billion a year into charter schools — but state laws regulating charters are among the nation’s weakest, and the state demands little accountability in how taxpayer dollars are spent and how well children are educated.

In reviewing two decades of charter school records, the Free Press found wasteful spending and double-dipping; board members, school founders and employees steering lucrative deals to themselves or insiders; schools allowed to operate for years despite poor academic records; no state standards for who operates charter schools or how to oversee them; and a record number of charter schools run by for-profit companies that rake in taxpayer money and refuse to detail how they spend it, saying they’re private and not subject to disclosure laws.

Michigan leads the nation in schools run by for-profits.

Columns

In a column in early December, Free Press Editorial Page Editor Stephen Henderson laid out DeVos’ role in creating the state’s charter school industry, and her unwavering loyalty to choice at all costs. We methodically made the case against DeVos as a national education leader. Henderson writes:

“DeVos is a believer, and a powerful influence wielder for the special interest she has championed. But that doesn't make her the right pick to helm an entire arm of the federal government. Wealth should not buy a seat at the head of any policy-making table.”

In a subsequent column, Henderson highlights a study that the charter lobby has referenced repeatedly (which DeVos referenced Tuesday night during questioning) on the performance of charter schools compared with traditional public schools. But even the authors of that study at Stanford University say too much can’t be read into its results. Henderson writes: “Research is a key component of the nation’s education infrastructure, and that research has been telling us for years that charter schools in Michigan have not yet delivered on their promises. DeVos’ record shows she’s willing to pick and choose among data to make a point, but not to tell the fuller, more nuanced stories about how choice falls short.”

And earlier in the year, Henderson explains to readers the breadth of the donations the DeVos family made to legislators who gutted legislation that would have placed Detroit’s charter schools under the same authority as traditional public schools to oversee quality control and make sure schools are placed where they are needed. It was a plan that won bipartisan approval in the state Senate. And unraveled in the state House. Henderson writes: “The DeVos family, owners of the largest charter lobbying organization, has showered Michigan Republican candidates and organizations with impressive and near-unprecedented amounts of money this campaign cycle: $1.45 million in June and July alone — over a seven-week period, an average of $25,000 a day. The giving began in earnest on June 13, just five days after Republican members of the state Senate reversed themselves on the question of whether Michigan charter schools need more oversight.”

Inside stories

Poor-performing charter schools in Michigan continue to get renewed, time after time. According to a Free Press review, almost two-thirds of Michigan’s oldest charter schools, those open more than a decade, are in the bottom half of state rankings. Many critics point a finger at authorizers and the state, which sets no standards for when to close a school. Authorizers defend themselves vigorously, saying that they must give schools every chance to succeed.

Two decades into Michigan's charter school experience, it's clear that some schools excel academically, others don't - and charters have not found the key to educating children in poverty. In other words, their results are similar in many ways to the traditional public schools they hoped to outperform.

It’s the combination of aviation with a more traditional high school curriculum that attracts students to West Michigan Aviation, a charter high school in Grand Rapids founded by Dick Devos, husband of education secretary nominee Betsy Devos.